The summer is nearly over, so cue the second half of the 2024 EDM festival season across Europe and the globe.
More than ever, this is a billion-euro business, with top stars such as Tïesto, David Getta and Calvin Harris working with top stars such as Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha and Tate McRae, banking millions and living on Billionaires’ Row in Miami. So, yeah, the biggest festivals such as Time Warp cost millions to stage, sell out fast … and cost more to attend every year.
And being global businesses, many of these festivals such as Time Warp and Tomorrowland have spun off clones in the United States and on other continents. Dispatches gets regular releases from the PR people, so look for updates through 2024.
Untold Festival
8 thru 11 August in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Untold Festival takes place in the woods of Transylvania outside Romania’s main tech center of Cluj. This festival includes multiple genres, and this year, rocker Lenny Kravitz and pop star Sam Smith will be playing the main stage along with EDM idols such as OGs Steve Aoki and Carl Cox, Martin Garrix and Swedish House Mafia.
So yeah, this is a big deal.
You can get tickets here starting at 400 lei, which translates to about 80 euros.
Les Plages Életroniques
16 thru 18 August in Cannes
This mega-festival in Cannes is one of the Beautiful People events that draws nearly 100,000 people every year. This year, Names include Boris Brejcha, Paul Kalkbrenner and – you guessed it – Timmy Trumpet. But the French prefer to keep things French, so there are a lot of DJs and acts we’ve never heard of. Which is cool. There are worse places to build your career than on the beach in Cannes.
What there is not is an English website, so we hope you parle Français.
Day passes start at 50 euros and you can get yours here. Now, as for getting a hotel room in August in the South of France … bonne chance avec ça.
Hospitality in the Woods
17 August in Beckenham Place Park, London
This is the drum & bass event of the year and the only one in a lush London park.
For a 10-hour festival (noon to 10 p.m.), there’s a crazy number of acts. We couldn’t list them all, so we’re including the graphic at the top.
Tickets start at 48.65 pounds and you can get yours here.
Sonus Festival
18 thru 22 August, Zcre Beach on Pag Island, Croatia
Sonus is Croatia’s real-dea underground house and techno festival, offering an escapist mix of adventure travel and music for the ultimate destination holiday experience. And it comes with a beach-party location … five days and five nights of partying on the Adriatic.
Sonus Festival is producedby ravers, for ravers, with every detail getting serious attention to detail from production and curation, to sound and visuals. And the lineup is primo including 999999999, Adam Beyer, Adriatique, Ben Klock b2b Marcel Dettmann, CamelPhat, Lilly Palmer, Loco Dice, Marco Carola, Mochakk, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth and a lot more.
Regular tickets are 239 euros, with VIP tickets going for 350 euros. You can get yours here.
Creamfields 2024
22 thru 25 August, Daresbury, England near Liverpool
They don’t get any bigger than Creamfields, and 2024 could be the biggest EDM event of the year, with all the Names from Armin van Buuren to Tïesto. It would be easier to say who’s not playing Creamfields, and the only name we see missing is David Guetta. Other than Guetta, there are 300 artists over four days performing on 30 stages for 70,000 expected attendees, according to the media release we got.
New for this year is the Apex indoor stage that can accommodate 30,000. Hope you like crowds.
Tickets start at 240 pounds and you can get yours here.
Mysteryland
30 August thru 1 September in Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands outside Amsterdam
Billed as the oldest EDM festival in the Netherlands, Mysteryland marks the last big summer event for a lot of Dutch kids and a fair number of their parents. This really is one of the biggest, typically drawing more than 100.000 visitors representing 100 nationalities to a green space outside Amsteredam. One reason is, it’s easy to get to in Haarlemmermeer, about 25 kilometers southwest of Amsterdam and 5 kilometers from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
This year, the theme is “Peace, Love& Mystery,” and the lineup includes 999999999, Adam Beyer, Charlotte de Witte, I Hate Models, Kölsch and many more.
There’s camping and other amenities.
You can get tickets here starting at 119 euros.
BEONIX Music Festival
20 to 22 September, Limassol, Cyprus
BEONIX Music Festival returns to Cyprus for another hot (literally) year with three stages, 50 DJs, and more than 30 hours of electronic music. Headlining the event are Fatboy Slim and Claptone with Estella Boersma, GHEIST (live), Teenage Mutants and Undercatt
Last year, the festival drew thousands of music lovers, with headliners Black Coffee, Paul Kalkbrenner, Stephan Bodzin, Maceo Plex, and Oliver Huntemann, so this is a big deal year after year.
Day passes are 125 euros and you can get yours here.
Moga Festival
2 thru 6 October in Essaouira, Morocco
After Europe cools off, we’ll always have Morocco. So polish up your French and Darija, and throw in a little bit of Berber and get packing.
In addition to warmish weather, Moga Festival has some big Names this year including Seth Troxler, Damian Lazarus, Âme Live, and Dixon. There will also be first-time performers from Tomorrowland, Day Zero, Burning Man, and Coachella, as well as from the party island of Ibiza, according to the media release we got. There are also spas and cultural events because that’s the direction the festival world has been moving for several years now.
A three-day pass starts at the equivilent of about 196 euros and you can get yours here.
Time Warp
25 & 26 October in Mannheim
This is a special weekend celebrating the birthday of an EDM pioneer. German DJ Sven Väth turns 60, which tells you that the electronic dance music genre is maturing. Will it mellow? We think not if the Rolling Stones are touring at 80.
But we digress ….
Time Warp will return to Maimarkt Mannheim in October. Joining Väth will be Nina Kraviz, Charlotte de Witte b2b Enrico Sangiuliano, Adam Beyer, and many, many more.
Sven Väth’s 60th aside, Time Warp is one of signature events in Europe, so this bad boy will sell out quickly. You can still get tickets here starting at 59 euros. And by the way, this is one of multiple Time Warp-branded events in Europe, the United States, Brazil and Spain, so make sure you’re getting the right tickets to the right event.
Soundstorm
12 to 14 December in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
As someone who spent a lot of time in Saudi for all the wrong reasons, I never though I would be writing posts about The Real Slim Shady playing an EDM/rap/rock festival in the once-forbidden Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
And yet, here I am.
MDLBEAST’s Soundstorm is making its 2024 eturn to KSA with newly announced headliners showcasing why the festival has firmly established itself as “the the most exciting multi-genre music festival in the MENA region,” according the release we got. Those headliners include Eminem, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Muse, Richie Hawtin and Marco Carola.
In the past few years, this festival has attracted the biggest names in music including David Guetta and Travis Scott.
And yes, there are female Saudi DJs, and no, they don’t wear headscarfs. Mind. Blown.
Tickets start at the equivalent of about 60 euros and have been on sale for awhile. But you can try to get yours here.
– Terry Boyd
